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Small white bugs on Sago

6 years ago

Spotted these on my Sago. Seem to be infested, but they aren't scale as I've seen it before - way smaller. Can anyone ID? I'd rather know what they are before I treat. I'm in south Florida.

Featured Answer

plantsman56

6 years ago

If your going to go with the coffee, I would brew some coffee tea as a direct contact spray and spray all over the plant. Maybe do it twice. Then using the grounds as a mulch should get rid of the ones in the ground. Fairchild gardens cleaned up all their Cycas using coffee, after they had lost $100k in Cycas. It is all I have had to use in 10 years, and I have 1000s of cycads.

Comments (11)

perryr85
6 years ago
Spray with a mixture of Neem oil and cyper8 or demonex.
perryr85
6 years ago
I have also used a hose with the flat spray application on my nozzle to spray it off by hand. Labor intensive, but if it's only one or two plants its doable.
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plantsman56
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
That's Asian scale. Males and females are different shapes. You will need to spray the leaves, but the crawlers will go down into the root system so at some point, if you don't treat them in the ground, they will keep coming back to the point you think they are impossible to get rid of. If you want to nuke them now, before they get bad, you can spray completely and deep drench the ground with Orthene. If you want to go organic, coffee will work. Here is a good article

http://www.cycad.org/documents/Broome-Coffee-2007.pdf
perryr85
6 years ago
Great info Plantsman! I'd rather use the coffee grounds than the pesticides.
palmbob
6 years ago
Asian scale is notoriously hard to get rid of... doubt coffee grounds are going to help one bit.
oldmangroot
Original Author
6 years ago
Thank you all. In the short term I went with pesticides - sprayed with orthene and drenched the soil with dinoturfan. I'll follow up with a couple more sprays of orthene over the next couple of weeks to insure I get any stragglers.

in the long run, I'm going to try the coffee treatment.
perryr85
6 years ago
Good luck and let us know how it works.
pj_orlando_z9b
6 years ago
Definitely Asian scale. Very common on sagos in Florida. I was just at a FL landscaping class and the instructor mentioned this. She said no matter what you do, you'll never get rid of them.
perryr85
6 years ago
I've not managed to get rid of mine, but I have been able to control it with Neem oil and cypermethrin. My plants look good and look healthy for the most part, but it's an issue that I have to address each year.
plantsman56
6 years ago
I don't exactly agree with that instructor. You can certainly kill all the scales on and under the plant. I have treated people's plants that live out in the middle of nowhere and they never got the scale again. 5 different customers, the same thing. The real problem is that a Cycas will be a magnet for CAS. If you live in a neighborhood where landscape maintenance people drive by your house every day, sooner or later they will have cycas leaves with CAS on them rustling in the breeze on their way to their next stop. I've done fine because my house is 550 feet off the road and my plants are behind the house. I think a good looking sago is worth the effort. I have a couple of variegated ones that I just love. If it ever gets to be too much of a problem, get a Dioon edule or an Encephalartos. Coonties at least don't get Asian scale, but they do get their own bugs. At least they are short enough that the coffee grounds on the ground, work systemically on coonties so they can stay clean for months.

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